


the days, the days (they break to fade)

by lazywriter7



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, BAMF Tony Stark, Banter, Bot Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Happy Death Day fusion, Happy Ending, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, kind of but not really horror elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: "I'm in a time loop."Steve blinked. "A time - I'm sorry, could you repeat that?""A time loop." Tony said, feeling plenty loopy himself.Pray the crazy away."You know like, I come here and fight goons with you. I go back to the Tower and tinker till nighttime - then FRIDAY stops responding, a suit comes alive and murders me in the workshop. And rinse and repeat." Not as convenient as one might think, whodunit wise.Silence. "Murde- did you saytime loop?""You need to watch more movies." Tony said.
Relationships: Friday & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 9
Kudos: 88





	the days, the days (they break to fade)

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, this was my planned entry for the Cap-Iron Big Bang. Then the deadline came rolling around and I only had 7k done :D So here I am, tossing it into the ether as another work in progress, and also because Halloween's just round the corner. For those waiting for a Stars Come Calling update - never fear, it's very much in the works.
> 
> As you can see from the tags, this is a _Happy Death Day_ (2017) AU - taking the premise, but not much else. Story is rated for swearing, murder and some possible mild sexiness in future chapters? But mostly the murder. 
> 
> Story title from _the point_ by Kate Tempest.

_This is how you’re going to die_ , Tony thought. _You big freaking moron._

Then again – why keep it to himself?

“This is how you’re gonna die!” He bellowed, voice modulator screeching with feedback, repulsors cutting off as his boots hit the plastic grass. _Little Miss T’s_ café had an ‘outdoor seating area’ carpeted with said plastic grass, currently deserted by patrons and two out of three potted geraniums on fire. Being under attack would do that to a place.

His yell seemed to have the intended consequences – Steve Rogers straightened up from where he’d been crouching and peering past a toppled iron-wrought table, face brightening when he glimpsed Iron Man. Clad in a sky-blue tee, and a pair of chinos of all things, he picked himself up and jogged across to Tony; head bare enough to get wet should it rain, and no fucking Kevlar, and definitely not a shield, _what the fuck Steve?_

“Glad you’re here.” Steve said, not even looking Tony in the helmet. His neck was twisting this way and that, as if to keep an eye out for the Extremis-enhanced thugs lurking around. Fat load of good that would do when they crisped up his skin like pork crackling. “Three hostiles, enhanced. I’ve cleared all civilians from the immediate premises but I might need you to keep perimeter if needed–”

“While you do what, exactly?” Standing out in the open was making Tony antsy, but the three heat-signatures were still shimmering red and safely indoors. “Find cover and cower sensibly while Iron Man saves the day?”

“I’ll go inside and take the one by the counter, keep an eye for the other two.” Steve didn’t miss a beat, not _a beat_ – as though this was their regular banter and Tony was blabbering on for the hell of it. Which yes, he’d been guilty of in the past, but there was a qualitative – a _tonal_ difference between sass to pass the time in those infrequent moments of boredom whilst punching aliens, and sass that covered up very real annoyance over the welfare of a fellow… an ex-teammate.

“Cap, those guys shoot flames at a temperature over thirty two hundred degrees. Which if you’re counting, is eight Bosch ovens cranked up to maximum and tossed into an incinerator.” Surely even Captain America had to yield in the face of logic? Especially when he wasn’t in the red-white-blue-and-fireproof? “Last time, that was hot enough to blow holes into my armors.”

Steve’s brows pulled together. “Maybe I should take point on this then.”

“That’s not what I– _god._ ” Tony resisted the urge to groan, or facepalm when he was wearing a metal suit of armour. Which Steve was Not Wearing. How hard was that to grasp? “And now I hath taken the Lord’s name in vain. I’ve not missed being on a team with you.”

Something flickered over Steve’s face, there and gone – and then he was turning around, shooting out briskly, “I’ll catch their attention and take one out, you come in through the front and get the others.”

Which was a stupid plan, because Tony was in the distracting red-and-gold getup even if the chinos did surprising things for Steve’s ass… but the ass had already taken off. _Damn_ it.

Repulsors powering up, Tony took to the air and jetted over to the front-facing side of the café, landing on the pavement as noisily as possible. Two large strides and he kicked the door in, gaze automatically scouting the back entrance to check if Steve was glowering at him. In the very next second, he received facefuls of fire – which warmed his nose up slightly, because unlike Apple, his model upgrades actually improved the tech.

When the fire died down, two goons with slightly-smoking clothing were gawping back at him. Tony raised his arms up wide. “And now I’ve thrown you off your rhythm.”

Repulsor shots took care of both of them, bodies hitting the floor in successive thumps. He took a second to confirm their life signals still flashing on the HUD. Down but not out, yay healing factors. Even as the smoke trails cleared from the air, something began beeping insistently on Tony’s systems – a smeared blob of colour, resolving to a half-hidden heat signature behind the counter. It mounted steadily from red to orange to yellow, finally going bluish around the edges. The explosion would take out the whole building, Tony needed a clear shot _now_.

A thud, then a loud clatter – someone groaned, and the heat signature faded down back to red, slumping flat to the floor. Something large and oval-esque rolled out from around the bottom corner of the counter, and settled down on the floor with a teeth-rattling clank.

A serving platter. Stainless steel, by the looks of it.

Tony sighed.

He remained staring despondently at the platter as footsteps echoed to his side, Steve rapping him briefly on the shoulder as he passed by, “EMTs outside, c’mon.”

He’d barely emerged on the sidewalk when men and women in emergency gear began brushing by him, stretchers already enroute for the unconscious goons. Must’ve been on standby at that perimeter Steve was talking about; New York was getting good at this. A couple cop cars, people in uniform reporting into their walkie-talkies, one ambulance parked ten paces away and another visible up the road, an EMT comforting a woman wrapped in a blanket (probably from Jersey). His mics were even picking up the whoosh of a nearby fire extinguisher, some good Samaritan hosing down the geraniums.

Steve was already standing at the intersection up ahead, lips moving as he spoke to some earnest-faced, freckly-cheeked officer. Chin bobbing as he listened intently to a response, sleeves of his tee pulling tight around the bicep as he gestured to the opposite end of the avenue. Hell, what thirty-going-on-ninety year old had the right to look this authoritative in a round-neck? In beige cotton pants? He didn’t even appear to have _sweat stains_ , for Christ’s sake.

Tony tramped off in the opposite direction, eyeing the clear space around a light post couple yards away for takeoff. His cams had caught sufficient video for FRIDAY to id the perps, best get some searches going when he reached the Tower. Check for military background, ‘public’ hospital records, any connections to the erstwhile Advanced Idea Mechanics… no guarantee the formula couldn’t have slipped out to other groups, but best to eliminate the obvious. He could probably smuggle in a shower sometime in between, run through the logs of FRIDAY’s latest buggy subroutine while waiting for the results–

“Tony?

He whirled around on reflex, staggering a little with the motion under the weight of the suit. “Don’t need medical attention, ‘m good.”

Steve blinked. His t-shirt was a couple of shades lighter than his eyes; unlike the shirt he was wearing on the night ULTRON went berserk, which matched those deep blues perfectly. It was the last time he’d seen Steve in civilian clothing… no, the time at the farm.

“Are you heading off?”

‘Heading off’ was probably not a thing people said in the forties. Did Steve learn modern turns of phrase online? Maybe from a blog titled ‘2010s slang’, with sad looking html and pictures that didn’t sit right in their divs.

Tony should’ve asked – five years ago, maybe, when it still would’ve mattered. He’d had a tab open in his tablet for a really long time now, called _Forties Slang_ with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the side. He’d gone through the list several times over, but had never heard Steve say ‘ducky shincracker’ or ‘stompers’.

“I’m… yeah. Seems like they’ve got it handled.” Tony waved vaguely at the controlled chaos behind them, wincing at the squeal of a reverse alarm as a tow truck backed into place a couple shopfronts away.

“Wasn’t expecting you to stay back and broom the café floors.” Steve smiled, though it was a weak twist of the lips more than anything. “Thought we could discuss… possible culprits? Motive behind attacking this location?”

“Maybe they were just mad at the customer service.” Tony shot back a weakass smile of his own, then realised the faceplate was still down and flipped it open with a command. Ugh, amateur hour over here.

It seemed to help though, something in Steve’s shoulders seeming to screw loose, eyes skittering over Tony’s face like he hadn’t seen it in a while. Which was ridiculous, because Tony was on _People_ ’s cover just last month. Better made up, too. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll send you a writeup of what I’ve got on AIM. Well, send it to Rhodey.” Did his hands always feel this awkward, just hangin’ by his sides? Maybe the next Mark of the armor needed pockets. Though Iron Man had definitely not had much cause in the past to just… stand around and chat. “And whatever FRIDAY manages to dig up. You guys can yak about it over your next team movie night, or whatever.”

Wow, that didn’t go over well at all. Those shoulders pulled up again, too straight, like shirt lines pulled taut under sewing pins. That barely tightening jaw – the lines of Steve’s body could spell out entire stories, if one took the time to notice. Tony just wasn’t entirely understanding this one.

“Okay.” Steve said, a little toneless. “Okay. It just… it felt like you wanted to say something to me, before the fight.”

_It wasn’t much of a fight. I dropped two guys with laser beams and you hit the third over the head with a really big tray._

“It’s…” not nothing, Steve waltzing into battle with naught but the clothes on his back was not nothing, but it was hard to argue with Steve when his face looked so droopy. “You didn’t have your shield on you.”

Tony was expecting something a little cocky in return, _I made do –_ but Steve’s brows furrowed inwards, lips grimacing slightly. “Feels weird to just strap it on my back and get on the subway with my shopping.”

Tony had a brief, vivid vision of one of those Buzzfeed compilations of weird things New Yorkers did on the subway – and in it a picture of Captain America, glowering in the train with the shield on his back and a bag of satsumas clutched to his chest. 

“Besides,” Steve continued, “I was downtown already when reports started coming over the radio–”

“Hmm. So you _weren’t_ ambushed on site and had ample time to head back to base to put on that suit I pay for.” Huh, maybe it wasn’t that hard to argue with him after all.

Steve bristled, which was far better than drooping. “Ample time’s laying it a bit thick when there are lives on the line–”

“You mean like yours?”

“–and isn’t that why you’re here in the first place? Or was it some other guy in a tin can who ‘retired’ a year ago?”

Whoever taught Captain America how to make audibly sarcastic quotation marks needed to be tried for federal crimes. Plus, he was right on the money with this one – Tony knew Sam and Rhodey were on mission, and _he_ was a darned sight closer to downtown Manhattan than the Avengers in the facility upstate. Flying over was a no-brainer.

Tony opened his mouth, something about how he came prepared while Steve came dressed for Whole Foods, but Steve beat him to it. “Unless you’re reconsidering the whole business.”

The bristles had gone down just as quickly as they’d pricked up, strangely enough; Steve’s gaze darting to the side as he went on to needlessly clarify, “Retirement. Hate to break it to ya Tony, but there ain’t exactly farms in New York.”

_“Maybe I should take a page out of Barton's book and build Pepper a farm, hope nobody blows it up.”_

It was too easy to ape Steve’s forced joviality, even as Tony did a crappy job trying not to think of the cute nineteenth storey apartment Pepper had bought in Malibu, single occupancy. “Real estate’s a big investment Cap, haven’t you heard? Gotta do my research, can’t just go about buying stuff willy-nilly.”

 _A year’s worth of research?_ But Steve wasn’t going to say that. He wasn’t going to mention the twelve months that Tony had spent in limbo, living in a Tower with an ‘A’ brandished across the top, that didn’t house any Avengers in it. Wasn’t going to mention the too-frequent gear and tech updates that just happened to make their way to the upstate Facility, even as Tony repeatedly bowed out of get-togethers and team dinner invites. Instead, he was going to press his lips into a thin line, remaining conspicuously silent every time Rhodey or Nat joked about Tony being kicked out of the team.

“You should come back.”

… or maybe he was gonna say that. Fuck.

“And make another apocalypse bot? No thank you.” He didn’t mean it, not really; it was an easy excuse. An easy excuse his brain came up with wayyy too quickly, but self-awareness was for morons and Tony wasn’t playing.

Steve didn’t take the bait – stepping forward till Tony could count every blonde strand in his fringe being ruffled by the wind. “I… I know things have been different since Bruce left. But Rhodey’s on the team now and… Sam’s a great guy–”

Whoopsie-do, here came the inappropriately-timed laughter. “What, you think I left the team ‘cause I didn’t _like_ you guys enough?”

Steve didn’t look brassed off by it, which felt like a damn revelation. There was fondness in the blues of his eyes, like every time someone from the team repeated the well-worn ‘Language!’ joke – line of sight slightly askew like it was lingering on the crinkles around Tony’s eyes. “Not sure if you’re aware, but there’s this modern saying that goes… people leave their managers, not their jobs.”

“As much as I appreciate you taking your leadership pointers from LinkedIn,” Tony felt his lips relax into a smile, inadvertently gentle. “It’s really not you, and it’s most definitely me.”

Steve’s lips flickered. “But–”

“Zip.” Tony lifted one red-and-gold finger, dropping it when Steve pursed his mouth, a little mulishly. “I am a big boy who can handle some friction with my… ‘team lead’, in the most generous description of the term. I didn’t leave the team because of you. I am not continuing to stay _away_ from the team because of you. I’d ask you to stop being self-absorbed and pull your head out of your ass, except that would be belabouring the point since by sticking your head up your ass you are literally self-ab–”

This was the moment Steve chose to _un_ zip, because the guy had never obeyed an order in his life. “Not even because of what I told you six months ago?”

“No.” Tony kept calm and carried on with his uber-light smile; he had just saved the city, or at very least the block, and deserved better than this conversational turn at two in the afternoon. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m all out of honesty and openness at the moment, so I’ll catch up with you later. Kay?”

It wasn’t even a pithy line – the last couple minutes had been the most honest ones Tony had shared with… not a robot, in a good few months. Before he left, he and Steve had been working their way, painstakingly, to a friendship and closeness that then never got the time to settle. Which lead to moments like these, comfortable and ingenuous until Tony got jolted out of it by the reminder of who he was talking to and words like _six months ago._

He turned around, taking a solid two steps before Steve spoke to his back, words carrying despite the downtown Manhattan clamour and a quiet voice. “I wouldn’t press if it didn’t feel like… you wanted to come back, sometimes.”

“Yeah.” It came out as an exhale, halted from escaping by his faceplate sliding down into place. His ears filled with the whine of the repulsors coming to life, boots leaving the ground as Tony glanced aside and cast an unseen smile at Steve squinting upward at him through the sunlight. “Next time, take the shield with you on the subway.”

 _You’ll save me a heart attack._ “You’ll make some kid’s day.”

He ascended, cutting faster and faster through the air till he was level with the tallest building in the skyline. Manhattan was a sea of glass around him and concrete below, Tony hovering in place for one last look. Steve had reduced to a tiny figure in the middle of a street filled with tiny figures; impossible to tell apart, except how all the other ones were moving and this one stayed still.

~

_On a dark desert highway_

_Cool wind in my hair_

_Warm smell of colitas_

_Rising up through the air_

“Boss?”

“Hrm?” Tony shifted on his creeper stool, tailbone twinging with the motion. The legless torso of the Mark XLVI was suspended at his eye level, cable entrails dangling to the floor.

“I have finished indexing and collating the results of the multiple searches you asked me to run in the afternoon.”

Tony leaned back on the creeper till his back creaked, dropping the Torx screwdriver in his hand into one of its numerous drawers. Whoever first came up with the idea of drawers on workshop stools needed a raise. Or a million dollars. Fuuck, his hand was cramping.

“Compress everything, chuck a couple encryptions on and send it to Rhodey.” Tony worked his way through each finger, tugging until the joints popped. Yeah he had machines to do this kind of hands-on work now – but he’d spent a whopping three hours bug-hunting through a month’s worth of FRIDAY’s logs this afternoon and he deserved some tinker time, dammit.

Nothing but the regular hum-and-whirr of the workshop, and Don Henley’s vocals. Tony frowned, “M I forgetting something? Oh yeah, send a copy to _il Capitano_ as well.”

A pause. “Would you not like to have a look yourself?” FRIDAY enquired, hesitation lacing the words.

The creeper wheels squeaked as he moved a couple metres back, the suspension chains hooked into the Mark XVII’s pauldrons gleaming mutedly in the light. “The things that I like are rarely the things that I should do.”

“And yet you have spent a hundred and thirteen minutes working on the suit.” Oho, harsh.

“An old man’s allowed his hobbies FRIDAY.” Tony twirled idly on the stool, widescreens and ceiling beams and industrial downlights spinning slowly in his vision _. Welcome to the Hotel California… such a lovely place (such a lovely place). such a lovely face._

“If you continued indulging your hobbies and rejoined the team,” Christ almighty not this again– “would that make me a member of the Avengers?”

Huh. Tony stilled the spinning with the press of a heel to the cold concrete, feeling the words carefully in his mouth. “Well you’d be flying into combat with me… in this hypothetical. So yes. Technically.”

FRIDAY made a corresponding sound of interest. Tony went on hastily, “If that’s something that interests you, I could talk to Rhodey about the War Machine armor – though I can’t really speak to the experience that positively myself. From personal, um, experience.”

“Vision seems to like it well enough.”

Tony could feel his eyebrows making for his hairline. “You talk to Vision?”

“We catch up.” FRIDAY hummed, almost chirpy. “He is the only other person my age I know.”

“Cool.” Tony said faintly. “If you’d mentioned you were feeling cooped up, I could’ve arranged some playdates with the other one-year-olds in daycare. Barton’s spawn was born last year… Neville? Nemo? Nessie?”

“Nathaniel.” FRIDAY corrected gently.

“Yes of course.” A few seconds traipsed by, the _Eagles_ crooning in the background. “Hey FRIDAY, are you having me on?”

“Just a little bit, boss.”

_Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice_

_And she said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device"_

Tony grinned at the lifeless helm of the Mark XVII, irrepressibly cheered. “I was thinking of putting in skylights in the workshop – brighten the place up. Whaddya think?”

“I think there are ten floors above you.” FRIDAY replied. “Have you considered a potted plant?”

“Hm, I see it. Ten-foot bamboo plants along the walls, windchimes. Get the feng shui goodness goin’, bring down some of the masculine energy of this place.”

“On second thought, perhaps I could just turn all the holograms green.”

Tony had been inching back to the suit with every sentence of that last bit, fingers already fiddling with the storage drawer of the creeper. Still one more verse of the song left to go, and he couldn’t possibly turn in to bed before that incredible guitar solo. He was in such a good mood – there was time to get in one last tinker, surely? “Sounds good to me.”

Feeling around for his 14 mm spanner, Tony registered a rustle of static like a sigh. “I will poke you in thirty minutes.”

_Last thing I remember_

_I was running for the door_

_I had to find the passage back_

_To the place I was before…_

When Tony lifted his head next, mostly to blink through the blurriness – the workshop was silent. Crap, missed the solo.

He stretched his neck from side to side, a yawn of enormous proportions cracking through his jaw. Most of the screens and holograms had powered down, leaving behind a quiet that took the creaking of the creeper under his weight and the clink of his spanner as it hit the drawer and returned them back in echoes. Most of the downlights were still on – powerful beams that lit up the workshop in sharp, symmetrical lines, shadows in between.

He pushed himself back from the suit with a squeal of rubberised wheels, the helmet staring at the floor with empty eyeslits. Hobbled off the seat to stand up straight, breaths loud in the still air – bright spots dancing even when he closed his eyelids. Okay fine, time for beddie-bye.

“Thirty minutes not done yet?” He called out, part wry and part hoarse with dehydration.

The words echoed, up to the industrial ceiling and back down. They weren’t deigned with a response.

“Fine, be like that.” Tony punctuated the sentence by another involuntary, jaw-splitting yawn. “You send the compressed files to Rhodey and Steve, at least?”

Something scraped in the distance, one of those phantom noises of the night. No replies.

“FRIDAY?” The sleep dissipated from his eyes with every passing second of silence, unease squirming to life at the pit of his stomach. This was highly unusual. “Respond – passphrase seven-seven-mariner-earendil-six.”

Still nothing. Fuck, he’d deployed a fix for one of her subroutines earlier – could that have had side effects? He’d need to boot up manually, check if all her nodes were still running.

_Clang._

His toes curled in his shoes, chest stilling mid-breath. What the… what was that?

It felt like the sound had leapt out of the floor, deep enough that it was still reverberating somewhere behind his sternum. One of the bots, probably. It came from the far end of the workshop, out beyond the bend of the L-shaped space, where their charging stations were.

_“Don’t check out the mysterious noise. Don’t do it, don’t do… why do they **always** check out the mysterious noise Tones?”_

“Sorry platypus.” Tony murmured. If DUM-E had fallen and couldn’t get back up, he’d be whining about it forever.

Tony’s footsteps echoed on the reflective concrete, lights flickering to life above him with every motion-detected step. He turned the corner, eyes flickering over the space – motionless cars with glossy hoods running all along one wall, reflecting the shiny light fixtures. The other wall was split into alcoves, each hallowed in dim blue and hosting a suit, looking on vacantly.

His heart kept pace with his steps – _thu-thump, thu-thump –_ hand stretching out to skim over the chrome finish of the nearest Bugatti absentmindedly. He still missed the vast, labyrinthine layout of his Malibu workshop, but he hadn’t done too bad for himself here. His gaze turned to the other wall, flitting from one suit to the next as he slowly drifted onward; there were enough armours for a gallery exhibit, easy. He’d gut them of all proprietary tech first, obviously, keep the outer shells. Tell the gallery people to play some ZZ Top over the speakers – maybe like a cello cover of _La Grange_ , he wasn’t a heathen. All ticket proceeds to high school art programs… ooh, maybe a competition? Children under 16 submit a design for what the next Mark should look like, god he should call Pepper– no he shouldn’t, terrible idea _._

He _definitely_ knew what should be the central piece of the not-a-vanity-project-what-are-you-talking-about exhibit. Tony walked up to the base of the Mark VII, mysterious clanging noise partly forgotten, neck craned up to admire the cardinal red finish of the chestplate. One of his favourite pictures ever of himself was in this suit. Some stupid, enterprising citizen journalist had snapped a shot of the Avengers standing all together, gazes raised to the Chitauri descending from the sky… it was front page on a lot of papers the next day. Figures, that the world would focus on that instead of the first-ever undeniable proof of the existence of hostile aliens. But it was a nice picture.

He’d thought he was going to blow it up large, hang it in the penthouse foyer when all the Avengers eventually moved in. Hah.

His fingers hovered over the armoured plates, their shadows long and slender over the metal – when something prickled at the edge of his consciousness. Red and shine and – and _movement_ , caught in the fuzzy reflection in the plates; Tony whirled around, thundering heart and wrists taut in the reflexive gesture that summoned the latest suit.

Nothing. Unmoving, still cars parked side by side, still walls. Even the lights didn’t flicker. Not a fly, or a whisper, nothing different from the thousand and one late nights he had spent, utterly alone, in the workshop. God, he needed to pick DUM-E off the floor, bed was definitely on the cards if he was starting to see things.

Tony turned around for a last, parting glance, and the Mark VII’s eyes were glowing.

He backed up a stumbling step, heel skidding on the concrete floor. Somewhere at the back of his head, it registered that there were no familiar whirrs in the distance, no armour flying through the air in response to his gesture, assembling around his clenched fists or unstable legs.

It wasn’t coming.

“Ar.. armour override.” Tony said, as the Mark VII raised its head. “Six seven nine seven one one two.”

 _It’s not blinking._ It had never hit him, before this moment – staring into a glowing, blue emptiness, and finding it staring back. _It doesn’t blink._

A building whine climbed through the air, like systems coming alive to full power. A _clank_ as the suit stepped down from the pedestal, towards Tony. 

“FRIDAY, distress call.” His thighs bumped something hard – his feet had taken him all the way back till he’d come up against one of the cars, hands feeling backwards for balance on the cool bonnet. “If you’re… distress call. Distress call.”

This wasn’t like taking on a team of thugs without his armour, or even a half-constructed ULTRON bot. This was Tony’s design. The Mark VII wouldn’t falter if Tony stuck a screwdriver in its grooves, there were no convenient latches to pull a gauntlet free if he got within range. The armour was devastating at close range, and lethal from a distance. There wasn’t… there had to be a way out of this. Right?

The Iron Man stepped out completely from the alcove, two hundred pounds of weight thudding onto concrete. Its fists uncurled, finger by finger, its palms coming alive with a faint white glow of –

 _Repulsors,_ Tony thought, and _move, move_ –

His knees dropped to the floor, cold concrete coming up to slam against bone with a painful crack. He twisted around, and threw himself chest forward under the chassis of the car, teeth gritting as he caught his weight on his elbows. He scrabbled forward, belly to the ground – the Ferrari Roma above him had a steel-and-aluminium body at least a meter thick, which gave him a few more seconds before it could be sliced through, maybe longer if the repulsors were initially on concussive mode.

Right, so. Make it to the main workshop, get a gauntlet manually from a later Mark. Three shots, fully charged, to the arc reactor. Okay.

His ears were pricked for the whine of repulsors, but they never came. The impact of boots on concrete rippled up from the floor through to his palms – then the Ferrari creaked around him, the back groaning slightly as if something had just sealed a grip on its undercarriage.

 _Fuck._ Tony pitched to the right, rolling over on his side and out from underneath the car; just as the Iron Man hauled the Ferrari up into the air by its trunk, front wheels barely keeping contact with the ground. Repulsors shot out the other glove, smoking a black patch onto the floor where Tony had just been.

Tony scrambled under the next car purely on instinct, chest tight with exertion, lungs filling with the stench of burnt cement. Not a dumb suit then. Something intelligent was after his life… and it knew how to operate his armours.

Behind, the Ferrari crashed back to the concrete as if tossed aside, windows shattering with the impact and raining glass; a death-screech of sound that would never make it out of here.

Tony hitched himself onward, mental map tracing a route to the main workshop via the underbellies of his cars. The Bentley he crawled under shook above him – the front wheel in his vision tilting slowly to the right as if the entire car was being… oh shit. 

The Bentley toppled over to its side to cut off Tony’s path, impact juddering through the air as it lost further balance and flipped completely to flatten the Lambo next to it. There was a shard of… ow ow _ow_ , something that had flown out and lodged right under Tony’s elbow, blood creeping past his cheek and scrapes all down his arms – muscles screaming as he raised himself off the ground and flopped onto his ass.

Completely exposed, Tony lifted his chin and stared up at the Iron Man, barely able to hear his own words over the ringing in his ears. “You owe me over six-fifty grand.”

Braced for a repulsor to the gut, he stayed still in breathless defiance – only for his eyes to widen at the all-too-familiar whirr of the shoulder flaps opening up. Mounted short-range missiles… those took three point two seconds to arm, in the Mark VII. That was…

That was more than enough time.

He lurched to his feet, knees unsteady, and made for the nearest suit in a stumbling run. Knowing that the armour would not give chase – why bother if you had missiles to fire and an automated targeting system?

Fully automated.

Three steps away from the Mark I, and mini-missiles took to the air; hissing over his head and leaving smoke trails as they embedded themselves into the weapons systems of at least five suits along the wall, avoiding him entirely. A targeting system that prioritised weaponised threats over living signatures – smart in its design, buggy in execution.

 _Boom_ , and the Mark I’s vambraces dislocated from the whole, sliding to the bottom of the alcove and toppling out with a clang. Tony lunged for the piece, fingers sliding into place effortlessly as he hoisted the flamethrower off the ground – it had been a while since he’d borne the weight himself, but some things never left your system. There was always the chance that the missile had severed an important connection, but he whirled around all the same, staggering in place but aim holding true.

One second. He had one second to fire, one second before the missiles re-armed and identified himself as a man attached to a flamethrower. But the Iron Man didn’t seem to care about that, flaps still open but head half turned away, palm pointed in the opposite direction. Glow dimming, repulsor whine powering down as if it had just taken the intermediate seconds to fire at… at something else.

Something that might’ve trundled out, curious about all the noise and eager to investigate. Something that would’ve wandered right up to the Mark VII, treads bumping unevenly on the glass-strewn floor, thinking it was a friend and–

Tony stared at the smoking ruin, a steel base sliced in half, edges still glowing red… an arm fallen over on its side, clamp unmoving.

“DUM-E.” Tony said, with the second he had left. The Iron Man’s helm swivelled back in his direction.

Then there were smoke trails in the air, and hissing in his ear – and screaming, so much screaming. Copper in his mouth, tongue swollen and lolling out, Afghanistan in his head; sharp things, pieces of fire, tearing into his skin and pulling his insides out.

His head hit the floor and Tony stared up at the ceiling, breath gurgling for long, long moments. Everything felt wet. Then there was red-and-gold in his sightlines – oh he’d wanted to tinker tonight.

Something pressed on his throat, cold and unyielding. A quiet crack, the sense of air receding sharply – and Tony’s vision greyed out.

~

“-eventy seven degrees outside, with no rain expected. I have taken the liberty to cancel your ten o’clock, as it is now ten-thirty, and your 12 o’clock as it was with Amazon.”

Tony blinked.

“Good… good girl, FRIDAY.” His fingers rose up to his neck of their own volition, feeling the vibrations of his very intact voice. No bandages.

“I do my best, boss.” He was in bed. Sitting up, though he didn’t remember that – white covers half thrown off, heels kicking lightly over the heated floorboards. He stilled them with a jerk, blinking again against the bright sunlight streaming through the ceiling-to-floor windows.

There wasn’t any natural light, in the workshop. Skylights or windows. And it hadn’t been daytime.

“Hiring you as my personal assistant was the best decision I ever made.” There were still words coming out of his mouth, entirely on autopilot, why–

“HR would disagree.” FRIDAY returned, tone coloured by warmth; Tony could feel his shoulders loosen slightly. She was here. They were safe.

“What name did you go by?” His feet settled on the floor, toe to heel, his breaths falling a bit more slowly. “Regina Phalange?”

“FRIDAY.” FRIDAY responded. “My parents were hippies.”

Bad dream. Everything was fine.

He walked to the attached bathroom, still barefoot, splashed water over his face and throat. Avoided his face a little in the mirror, brushing his teeth and speaking through a mouthful of foam, “This what, the third time we’ve cancelled on Amazon?”

“Fourth.” FRIDAY corrected, starting up the morning headlines in a helpful feed on the mirror-screen instead. “Miller commented on the call that at this rate, the very least I could do was go to dinner with him.”

Tony’s lip quirked, just a little. “And you said?”

“That I lived in Japan.” FRIDAY responded demurely. “American companies, labour outsourcing, you know how it is.”

He snorted into his towel, drying his face rigorously. He didn’t remember this bit, from the dream. Had he asked about Amazon at all? God, he didn’t retain mundane details even when he wasn’t trying to pry them back from the jaws of the Sandman.

Oh, fuck it. “When you’re done breaking the hearts of middle-aged creeps, could you Google ‘high definition murder nightmare’ for me please?”

A pause. “I did not detect any irregularities in your sleeping patterns last night. Though I did recommend that you continue consuming your prescribed dosage of sleeping pills; I can pencil in Dr. Feldman at twelve–”

“No need Fry. ‘Sides, sleeping pills are for the strong.” All those pesky people with non-addictive personalities.

“You have never openly shared concern over your nighttime terrors previously.”

_That was before they got a home-theatre-surround-sound upgrade._ Tony stuck the heels of his palms into his eyelids, kneading till they felt satisfyingly raw. Even at the peak of his post Battle of New York nightmares, they had never felt… quite like this. “Forget it, I was mostly kidding anyway.”

“Google,” FRIDAY continued on stiffly – bless her dear processors – “has mostly come back with a collection of clips from Swedish and Korean horror movies. Should I curate them into a list?”

His hands dropped to the granite top of the basin, lips twitching into a smile despite it all. “I’m good FRIDAY.”

Although… “Send DUM-E up, after a while?”

“Of course.” She assented immediately. “Private elevator or all-access?”

“All access all the way.” There was something magical about the reactions of people, mostly the non-SI employees, when they walked into a corporate elevator and saw that they were going to be riding it with a large mechanical arm. Tony sometimes went through the clips before going to bed – his current favourite was a harried mom with her kid headed for the childcare on the 14th floor. The boy had pointed at DUM-E with a stubby finger, and said in a hushed whisper, “The _claw_.”

That memory kept him cheered for the next few hours, as he yawned through breakfast and poured three cups of coffee into his gullet; went down to R&D for a surprise visit, multitasked through a couple conference calls. The sky was absolutely clear outside, not a puffy cloud to be seen – even Tony who wasn’t that big of an outdoors guy found himself drifting off once or twice, daydreaming about popsicles and walks in the park. Morning ticked over into afternoon and as the day continued to be almost insolently sunny, Tony found himself at the employee lounge on level thirty three, debating if he had the time to venture out for a walk and coffee number four before his two-thirty-lets-be-realistic-three o’clock.

“Boss?” FRIDAY spoke through his earpiece, and Tony jumped to attention; probably ruining the attempts of the woman trying to sneakily photograph him from behind that ficus.

“We have a situation? Giant coffee heist, two blocks down, near Cherry Lane maybe?”

“Bit farther than that.” FRIDAY clarified, amusement still filtering through faintly. “Downtown Manhattan.”

… oh.

His chest locked up before he’d even really comprehended the words, pause dragging on as he blinked unseeingly at double walled glass. It… it wasn’t so much the other shoe dropping, as a giant fucking metric ton of steel, weight flattening anything in a mile-long radius.

He could hear his own voice, barely above a murmur. “How many hostiles?”

“Unconfirmed.” FRIDAY said. “But they appear to be enhanced.”

Tony turned away from the window, something suddenly, terrifyingly dizzying about the height, the endless blue skies. The phantom smell of smoke lingered in his nose – fire on his helmet and burnt concrete.

“Any… anywhere close to a _Little Miss T’s_?”

A tiny, thrown-off pause.

“About a hundred yards away.” FRIDAY confirmed – and Tony squeezed his eyes shut, almost, almost smiling.

One last check. “Do a social media sweep. Any mentions of Captain America, geolocated in a five mile radius around the current location of attack.”

“Checking.” FRIDAY said. “Initial hit – a tweet at 2:14 pm, about a mile out from the café. @Hanessy34 says: _Spotted Cap’n America and a tite pair of chinos at my local bakery. I’m only eating pumpernickel from today. #BunsOfGlory._ ”

Well then.

“Should I,” FRIDAY asked, almost gentle; Tony startling because it had probably been close to a minute of full silence and there were firebreathing jerks out there who did not care for his current breakdown at all. “Keep the suit waiting at the landing pad?”

“No.” Tony said, fingers drifting to his throat – knuckles brushing against the silk of his tie, before he curled them in. “I mean, yeah. Yeah, of course.”

 _Not a dream._ He knocked into the ficus on his way to the elevator, unable to slow down even when dirt and ceramic smashed into polished tile. _Not a dream._ His hands vibrated in his pockets, eyes watching the floor numbers blink red as the bottom of his stomach dropped with the ascent. _Not a dream._ Wind whipped against the bridge of his nose as he emerged on the pad, the hulking lines of the Mark XLV glowing red under the afternoon sun. _Not a_ – his hands quivered before the armour encased them, but it was easier when the chestplate slid into place, the HUD flickering to life with FRIDAY in his ear. Easier when he was soaring across the skies of New York City, machinery locked and loaded and entirely at his bidding.

Maybe there was still a flicker of hope, persisting beyond the reach of logic somewhere in his brain. Something that lived for a grand total of fifteen minutes, before dying an ignominious death – as he pulled himself to a standstill six feet above _Little Miss T’_ s, watching two potted geraniums on fire and a dumb blonde crouching by a toppled table, buns of glory outlined perfectly.

Repulsors cutting out, he hit the fake grass with a particularly defeated thump. Steve Rogers turned his head at the sound.

Sky-blue tee, beige chinos. No shield. Steve emerged from his uninspiring position of cover, jogging over to Tony with a face that brightened as it got closer.

_You gave me that same expression yesterday. Except… I guess it wasn’t yesterday._

“Glad you’re here.” Steve said, head twisting from side to side in an effort to keep track of the Extremis-sed goons. “Three hostiles, enhanced. I’ve cleared all civilians from the immediate premises but I might need you to keep perimeter if needed–”

Fuckity fucking fuck.

**Author's Note:**

> And scene! Lyrics in chapter taken from _Hotel California_ by the Eagles. There's also brief reference made to a Netflix standup special so ridonkulously popular that attribution is almost unnecessary ;) Plus Toy Story! 
> 
> The tumblr link for the story is [here](https://lazywriter7.tumblr.com/post/632948438971105280/the-days-the-days-they-break-to-fade). 
> 
> Do let me know if you like it, updates are a little feedback-dependent at the moment. Comments and kudos and whatever you might like to chuck my way are very welcome.


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